Hitherto, in personal computers, various image effects have been added to image data of an image picked up by a digital camera or the like (hereinafter referred to as an original image) by executing image processing software and performing processing such as enlargement processing on the image data.
In a digital camera, performing of a processing process which requires a relatively large amount of processing has been becoming easier due to the improvement in processing performance and the increase in capacity of RAMs.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-130350 describes an image processing apparatus in which field memory means for storing, in units of one field, a series of items of image data in which one screen is constituted by two fields, is provided, and that enables image processing to be performed in units of one field by performing writing and reading of image data into and from the field memory means within one access cycle and can significantly reduce the capacity of a memory required in the image processing. Digital cameras and the like include such an image processing apparatus so as to add image effects to an original image.
In a processing process like this, a digital camera including an image processing apparatus according to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 200-130350 stores image data of an original image and data of a processed image in the same field memory. Then, in such a digital camera, in order to prevent overwriting of the image data of the original image with the image data of the processed image in this field memory, the image data of the original image needs to be temporarily saved in a memory in units of one line or a dedicated line memory for saving data needs to be provided.
Moreover, for digital cameras, as the number of pixels of image data increases in accordance with the need for high-definition images, the amount of calculation required for adding image effects increases. Since the capacity of a memory, such as a RAM, of a digital camera is smaller than the capacity of a memory of a personal computer, there is a problem in that the storage capacity of a RAM, a line memory, and the like needs to increase as the above-described amount of calculation increases.